


Not Nearly Hollow

by Laiska



Category: Dark Souls
Genre: Gen, Undeath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-03
Updated: 2012-07-03
Packaged: 2018-03-08 15:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3213476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laiska/pseuds/Laiska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quarrel with the Crestfallen. An entirely self-indulgent piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Nearly Hollow

**Author's Note:**

> I lost my very first file to trying to engage an NPC in combat too soon, and not knowing where to run. I dealt with it much later.

 

 

 

"In another life, you killed me."

Opposite from him, beyond the flame, she peered into his offensively plain face, pondering. Her chin rest on balled fingertips, armoured elbows pressed into armoured thighs. Stale breezes stirred the fire, raising fumes of burnt iron, failing to move the bangs plastered to her forehead by grime, by paste of sweat and dirt, exposed by her shed helm. Heat flickered on her dusty features.

He appeared unimpressed.

"What’s this…? Now why should I want to do that to you?"

"…I don’t remember."

It was only a half-memory. Ghosts echoed in her skull, malformed visions of a life that was not her own, a life she had never led. A hooded figure, green and unwise. A foolish attempt. Blade pierced through her thin garb to loose black blood from mangled, ruddy flesh. A wisecrack, and a sneer. Each time the same, each time different.

"You seem like a reasonable sort, not _nearly_ Hollow,” he chuckled. “I can’t imagine us having any quarrel. Unless, perhaps, you did something you shouldn’t have?”

A pointed conversation. A broiling curiosity.

She snorted and shifted her gaze to the withered corpse draped over the edge of a well long-dried, their only companion, focusing somewhere beyond. “As I said, I don’t recall. But I know what I know. You _killed_ me, slaughtered me, _murdered_ me. Over and over. I don’t believe we even fought, no, I fought for my _life_.”

She straightened, hand dropping silently to a sheathed blade.

"That’s right…" Her voice shook. "You ran that pitiful sword of yours right through me. You hacked into my spine. You flung me from that precipice. You laughed as you dragged your boots through my blood, cracked your heel into my face so that blood might stream from my gasping lips. And then you sat there, feigning innocence, self-satisfied, until my corpse renewed itself before you, so that you could do it all again."

His lip twisted and eyes crinkled inscrutably, rotting teeth bared. “Now that doesn’t sound at _all_ like me. You must have mistaken me for someone else. I’m but a crestfallen no one, a forlorn nothing. My fighting days are long past and had I the will for one more struggle, I doubt I would waste it on the likes of _you_.” Even so, his hand fell to his piece as well.

She was faster. Blood beaded on his stubbled throat as his breath hitched. She stared down the blade like a sight, aimed at his exposed windpipe.

"You’re a _monster_. You insolent piece of filth. I be…” Her voice fell to a harsh whisper, as if the well-skeleton might mock her words. “I _begged_ you. I had done nothing to you and yet you used me for _sport_ , defenceless, foolish vagabond that I was… Perhaps you’d enjoy your slow fall into madness with a few fewer limbs!”

For a time, neither spoke.

"Well that’s a nice story. Do you intend to kill me?"

She thought. Another gale swept up from the valley, bringing charcoal and decay, swaying the dark flame behind her back, which glinted off costume meant for someone much different from her, someone with far fewer principles. Stray sunbeams escaping from the clouded sky sparkled and danced as she swiveled her blade.

"No," she finally said. "A wretched thing like you isn’t worth my mission." She lowered her arm. "And besides, it doesn’t matter."

"And why is that?"

She snickered. So many questions from a man who claimed to hate them.

"Because in the end, I killed you."

 

 

 

 

 

> "What are you looking at? Don’t try anything clever."
> 
> She broke from her focused trance with a start. “What? Oh, no, it’s nothing…”
> 
> Her fingers had wandered to her face again, wrinkled and charred skin beneath tattered hood, festering, pus-laden rivets and drooling boils where smooth skin once lie, a beleaguering plague in place of long-lost beauty. The face of a corpse that was once human. She groped for her rusty scimitar.
> 
> "It’s just… when you mentioned taking the life of a healthy Undead, to restore my humanity? That would mean _any_ healthy Undead, wouldn’t it? Including one such as yourself…?”


End file.
